Will this be the cursiest Doctor ever?

[james_davis_nicoll]

Don't know. In related news

Moffatt apparently getting annoyed by people who want a female doctor whereas Gaiman points out a woman would not have done because replacing Smith requires "someone harder and older and more dangerous" than Smith.

Comments

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

I've forgotten who the commenter was, but someone pointed out that "not quite, not yet" is a very common thing for privileged people to say when the question of equal representation comes up. "Now" has a way of never showing up. At the very least "not yet" is a statement that requires considerable explanation, and "it just feels right to me as a storyteller" is just as weak a justification as the idea that women can't be hard.

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

Oh, but he has reasons, I'm sure. It's all "stuff" he finds "hard to articulate" but they are awesome reasons, and anyone who doubts his commitment to Sparkle Motion gender equality is being malicious.

To be honest, I'm hard pressed to think of a more dismissive, privileged stance than "not yet" but "it would absolutely be on my list" for next time.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Fwiw, I am in the "female Doctor but not yet" camp because given Moffat's record on female characters, I can't envision any way he could do a female Doctor that wasn't horrendous; I would really like to have seen Moffat replaced at this point, but failing that, I am hoping for Capaldi's tenure to outlast Moffat's.

[fengi.livejournal.com]

At this point I'd like Moffat replaced because otherwise where going to a have a season long arc where the climax involves The Girl who Gave Birth to Herself.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

I've forgotten who the commenter was, but someone pointed out that "not quite, not yet" is a very common thing for privileged people to say when the question of equal representation comes up. "Now" has a way of never showing up.

To run off on a tangent, it's also a common thing for unprivileged people to say. Civil rights activists in the U.S. in the Fifties and Sixties ran into resistance from some blacks who feared that, by rocking the boat, things might become worse rather than better.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

OTOH, not having a female Doctor is far, far, far less important and significant than not having civil rights, which is what "not quite, not yet" usually applies to.

Tempests in teacups and all that.

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

That's certainly true. On the other hand, it's not unfair to use pop-culture issues that are trivial in themselves as bellwethers for larger social trends. And if public figures say tone-deaf things in public, they're available to be publicly called out for tone-deafness.

The actual decision to cast the Doctor is a different issue than the way Gaiman and Moffatt both chose to describe that decision. If the two of them had studied up on how best to portray "avuncular white men know best" with their comments, they couldn't have done a much better job than they ended up doing accidentally.